David Tizzard is a professor at Seoul Women’s University, holds a PhD in Korean Studies, and hosts the Korea Deconstructed podcast. He has lived and worked in Seoul for more than two decades. Reach him at datizzard@swu.ac.kr.
Why Korea is cooler than China
Visitors clad in hanbok stroll around Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul in this undated photo. Courtesy of Huongnguyen
By David A. Tizzard
Okay, so let’s play a game. I say, “South Korea.” What pops into your head? Even if you’re not big on media or modern culture, you can probably come up with BTS, "Parasite," mukbang queens and bowls of fire noodles, then those glass-skinned influencers who’ve convinced half the world that toner is more important than god.
Japan? Easy! Anime, Studio Ghibli, Mario, Harajuku street fashion, and just enough weirdness to keep the internet engaged. And now... “China.” Let’s be real. Most people don’t think of music, or cinema, or fashion. It’s social credit scores. Xi Jinping memes. The CCP deleting Winnie the Pooh. Covid cover-ups. Tiananmen Square tank man. And so on.
There’s a canyon-sized cultural gap here, and among my students, the difference is daylight. They’ll talk your ear off about Seventeen’s latest sub-unit, break down every episode of "Return of the Blossoming Blade," and tell you why Tzuyang is better than Hamzy. They’ve cried reading Han Kang. They know NewJeans choreo. But name a Chinese pop group? A drama? A film? Nothing. Dead air. Most can’t tell Zhou Shen from a WeChat notification. And that matters. It’s like someone hit mute on a whole civilization.
I don’t bring this up to dunk on China. Liu Cixin is on my shelf. Zhou Lei and Li Ronghao are in my playlists. "Lust, Caution" is forever etched in my mind. But little of it has crossed the algorithmic border wall into Western pop consciousness bar perhaps the computer games Genshin and Black Myth: Wukong. But China didn’t get forgotten. It got locked out. Or perhaps it intentionally never tried to open the door.
Meanwhile, Korean content floods every platform. Netflix, Spotify, YouTube are all practically in bed with Seoul. You don’t just have the possibility of watching Korean stuff now. It’s practically demanded that you do. These platforms start playing the things before you’ve even had the chance to say yes. And when it does start, it speaks the language of Western storytelling with its three-act structures, tropes and arcs but adds just enough local chaos to make it feel new. It’s familiar exoticism. Safe, but spicy.
Soft Power, Hard Truths
Korea didn’t just stumble into this cultural dominance. It planned it. It invested in it. It weaponized it. Back in the early 2000s, while most countries were still treating culture like it belonged in a dusty museum, South Korea treated it like a weapons program. They poured billions into Hallyu. Not to preserve tradition. To dominate. Pop culture was the nuke. And guess what? It worked. The country that once exported cheap knockoffs now exports cultural gold. So much of Korean content is top-drawer and worth paying attention to.
The result? A study in 2020 showed 77% of Americans viewed South Korea favorably. In 2003, it was just 31%. That’s not a bump. That’s a total rewiring of national perception. Through music. Through dramas. Through eyeliner and choreography.
Meanwhile, China doesn’t want to be cool. It wants to be in control. If Korea says, “Watch our show, listen to our music, learn our slang,” then China says, “Here’s our money. Take the deal. And don’t mention Taiwan. Or Tibet. Also, would you like a panda?”
Why waste time being loved when you can be feared or paid?
Chinese media has talent though, of course. Lots of it. And they’ve got history. They used to be the kings of cool with Hong Kong cinema as punk rock in a silk robe. Jackie Chan doing his own stunts. Chow Yun-Fat diving sideways with twin pistols. But now? Now you’ve got the CCP red-penciling every frame. Things like "Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation" get stripped of all queerness and flattened into government-approved bromance. Even their megastars like Tang Wei and Fan Bingbing get blacklisted if they breathe wrong.
It's not about talent. It’s about fear. And fear doesn’t win Oscars or top Billboard.
A Sealed-Off Aquarium
Korea and Japan share the internet with the West so they are fluent in the language of Western cool. Hollywood taught them the grammar of pop, and they reinterpreted it. Bong Joon-ho makes a serial killer flick, drops it in a rice paddy, and fills it with chain-smoking detectives who can’t do a damn thing right. K-pop takes Western beats, then shoves them into neon palaces with hanboks and holograms. The result is things that are familiar but fantastic. It feels local and global. And crucially, it doesn’t scare anybody.
China? It’s a whole other planet. You step into Douyin, Bilibili, WeChat, and it’s like you’re in the upside-down. Sure, it looks the same. There’s vertical scroll, lofi, hot people pointing at text bubbles, and lots and lots and lots of cats being used to recreate dating experiences. But the humor? The references? The rhythm? Completely alien. It’s disorienting in a good way until you realize that this isn’t a cultural exchange. It’s a sealed-off aquarium. Beautiful, yes. But completely isolated.
Thus the country is constantly treated with suspicion. Cultural products are assumed to be propaganda. Even "Turning Red" got side-eyed. "Everything Everywhere All At Once" got a pass because it was wrapped in indie cred, multiverse chaos, and hot dog fingers…and also because Michelle Yeoh kicks so much ass that nobody wanted to ask questions.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is actively trying to ban Chinese platforms. TikTok, Huawei, WeChat, and anything that might give China a foothold in soft power gets the axe. Why? Because culture is a vibe war. And right now, Korea and Japan are working the room like rockstars at a wrap party, while China’s that guy in the corner nursing a drink, staring daggers, and deciding whether to flip the whole table. The YouTube "IShowSpeed" is talking to him, at least.
When Cool Gets Personal
Now imagine living through all this. Imagine being a 19-year-old student from Beijing or Gansu, sitting in a seminar in Seoul, Seattle, or Sydney. You say where you’re from. You see it: the twitch. The flicker in someone’s eye. They think: surveillance. Social credit scores. COVID. Xi. You’re suddenly a walking embassy.
Now your roommate’s Korean. They say where they’re from. Suddenly it’s, “OMG, I love 'Crash Landing on You!'” or “Can you teach me how to do my eyeliner like that?” “I love Korean food!” Same humanity. Different reception.
And this is where it hurts. Culture becomes identity. And when yours is firewalled, censored, or erased from the algorithm, you’re not just excluded, you’re invisible.
I see it in my classrooms every semester. Students who know every frame of "Itaewon Class," who can recite lyrics from Stray Kids latest drop, and who’ve read every chapter of "Solo Leveling." But ask them about "Crouching Tiger" or Zhou Lei? They stare at me like I made it up.
It’s not their fault. It’s the pipeline. Korea built theirs with vision and intent. It embraced the cultural connections that Washington placed through war and ideology. China’s pipeline meanwhile is a maze of red tape and paranoia. And until that changes, until the wall comes down and the art gets out, Korea’s going to stay cooler. Not because it’s better. But because it wants to be seen and the West wants you to see it.